The following comes from an Aug 12 posting by Rachel Lu on the Federalist.com.
Writing at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum poses a great question. Actually, he has a couple of questions:
Do anti-abortion activists really think abortion is murder? Or is their opposition merely an expression of their broad discomfort with modern sexual and gender mores?
I appreciate Drum’s forthrightness. A lot of liberals wonder why pro-lifers rally and lobby and stand in the rain outside abortion clinics: can it really be that they care about babies? No, pro-lifers probably do these things because they have old-fashioned views about sex. They know that abortion has enabled modern women to lead a “sexually liberated” lifestyle. And they want to stop it because they do, in fact, want to see wayward women “punished with a baby.”
It’s rare for someone to pose the question as directly as Drum has. But I know he’s not alone in thinking this way. I see the contempt with which liberals accuse conservatives of caring about children “only before they’re born.” Obviously that smear reflects other policy disagreements as well, but it still speaks to a real skepticism about the authenticity of conservative concern for unborn life.
Okay, then. Are you ready for this, Mother Jones readers? I’m going to answer the question.
Yes. Pro-lifers really believe that abortion is murder, i.e., the unjust killing of an innocent human being.
Why would liberals doubt this? I’ll just cut to the chase and admit right now: I think it’s partly just bad faith. It can’t feel good to be the guy in favor of killing (at parental convenience) something that really does look quite a lot like, you know, a human baby. Instead of facing up to the real implications of something so icky, better to deflect by accusing the other guy of nefarious motives.
I don’t think that’s the whole story, however. There actually are some non-ridiculous reasons to question the depth and reasonableness of pro-lifers’ commitment to the unborn. It’s worth taking the time to address these, for the edification of Drum and anyone else who thinks parents should be free to end the lives of their unborn daughters and sons.
This much Drum has right: conservatives have issues with our sexually libertine culture. Abortion isn’t the only problem with it, just the worst one. The killing of hundreds of thousands of babies annually is a pretty massive “con” to sexual liberation. That’s hard to top (so to speak).
Drum’s theory might make sense if the pro-life movement were some radical fringe.
But there are plenty of other problems too. I could just rattle off a list: divorce, single motherhood, spreading HIV, pornography addiction, falling marriage rates, falling birth rates, campus “rape cultures,” teenaged girls who kill themselves after a porn star debut that they thought they could handle. Or, I could refer you here and here for more thoughtful reflections on how much we harm our young people by pretending sex never does. But the bottom line is that people nowadays are having a really hard time putting their love lives in order and, yes, our sexually libertine culture deserves some blame.
So I suppose it’s possible that some people’s pro-life convictions are rooted, primarily, in that general sense of alarm about “modern sexual and gender mores.” Here’s a question, though: how many other entry points are there for talking about the evils of sexual libertinism? A million? Drum’s theory might make sense if the pro-life movement were some radical fringe. If the March for Life were a piddling little event that someone threw together a year ago, or if #prolifeacrossamerica were another flash-in-the-pan hashtag campaign, then sure, it might be fair to reflect on whether people were really serious.
Pro-life activism has constituted one of the most important political and moral movements of our time.
It’s not like that. Pro-life activism has constituted one of the most important political and moral movements of our time. It has left its stamp on our politics quite literally over decades. It draws thousands together in peaceful rallies every year, all across the country. Nearly a fifth of Americans say they are unwilling to vote for a candidate who is not pro-life. And it has affected the moral development of our young people. As a professor of moral philosophy, I’ve heard scores of students explain to me how pro-life activism was their main entry point into thinking seriously about moral responsibility, personhood, and what a human life is worth. This is a big deal, Kevin Drum.
You can’t sustain a movement on that scale without a serious moral foundation. Paranoia about sex isn’t enough. After all this time, conservatives deserve to be taken seriously when they say they care about life….
To read the entire posting, click here.
The issue is death. When thinking of the tens of millions of innocents murdered by their own mothers, and now, with the financial assistance of the U.S.Government, it makes one want to leave America. Of course, there is really no where to go, as pro-abortionists — like pro-homosexual sexualists — have taken over the debate for their pet cause on a global level. Further “of course”: the true reason for the pro-abortionists wanting no legal restriction is that this demanded right involves the “right” to unfettered sexual license. Worrying about the effects of serial sexual escapades supposedly frees women from all responsibility and thereby is a “fundamental right” kind of like being freed from slavery. Except, the black man had no choice in the matter, while the woman granting her favors here and there has every choice. Interesting isn’t it that both the sexual woman and the homosexual sexualists demand the same thing — the right to do whatever they want sexually (1) without the right of society to control it, (2) with the demand that this right be enshrined into law, (3) with the insistence that society pay for the “procedure,” and (4) that no one be permitted to speak up against it, to make them feel guilty or anything. One day, historians will look back at this massive seflishness and wonder how society fell for it, paying for it, to boot, while giving up First Amendment protections along the way. Not difficult to connect the dots here, but oh, so difficult to find the spine to publicly object.
The phrasing of the question is awkward, at best – “do pro-lifers really ‘think’ abortion is murder?” Just very relativistic. This issue has nothing at all with what somebody “thinks.” It’s been conclusively scientifically demonstrated that abortion takes a life. Not that Catholics needed the science for affirmation, but secularism has no place to run and hide anymore. A better question would be “do pro-aborts really think that personal convenience justifies the killing of an unborn person, or are they just so soulless that they don’t care?”
What?
ABORTION is the killing of one human being for the convenience of another.
I had a friend in college with whom I disagreed on abortion. In our arguments, she would always return to the question, “What is wrong with two people making love?” My answer was, “Nothing, it’s the murder of the child that’s wrong.” We always seemed to be arguing past each other.
So to answer, “What’s wrong with two people making love?” Fornication outside of marriage is a SIN……the results of this sin hurts the child that may be created…..either by killing the child or by abandonment of the child by the father or the mother. Then, on a separate note, “making love” happens within the marital bond…..”having sex” happens outside of the marital bond (one man and one woman) and takes the form of many “types” of sexual sin.
Just as many otherwise good Catholics and Christians are swayed towards supporting abortion because of the manipulation of language, making abortion a virtue and birth a negative; so, too, are many Catholics and Christians being swayed by the same manipulative methods, toward the latest form of suicide, the signing of DNR forms or POLST forms, or, allocating a little (too much) morphine to Mom or Dad. Beware the loss of moral language.
If Catholics would stop voting for pro-abortion candidates, abortion in America would be rare. There are people who post on this site that voted for Obama, the most pro-abortion President in the history of America!
Catholics are not permitted to be one issue voters. There is no one single issue that Catholics are instructed to use to vote for a candidate. Ever.
“Whether it is pleasant or difficult, we will obey the command of the Lord, our God, to whom we are sending you, so that it will go well with us for obeying the command of the Lord, our God.” (Jeremiah 42.6)
Pro lifers will witness to the sanctity of human life until the end of time. Those who want to place a crown of thorns on our head, those who wish to mock and scorn us as we carry this cross of love, those folks will one day beg forgiveness for their ignorance, their lack of charity, their lack of action. May God forgive them.
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
John Feeney – your comments are right on but I would like to add if priests, Bishops and Archbishops, and the Women Religious would stop voting for Pro Abortion candidates, we would see a change in attitudes. It would also be heart warming to hear a homily – once in awhile – about abortion, sex outside of marriage, and a few other things that the church does not condone. What a wonderful world we would have then! Over 50% of Catholics, voted for Obama. How do they justify that decision?